I'm a pressman for a newspaper company. Local news.
It's pretty boring most days but that's fine. I don't make a lot, just enough to pay my rent, buy some food, and repeat until my next paycheck, or in other words, $18.50/hour.
My days are either printing junk mail ads or doing maintenance on the press. Today we replaced all the rollers in Tower 1 Black. Went well, messy as hell, was dripping with ink from head to toe. When I got home I had to wash my hair like 3 times until the shampoo wasn't black anymore. I don't mind the messiness of the job though. Doing actual work like that is nice for me, I like the days we got stuff to fix.
Most days are printing junk mail, local newspapers, and cleaning. It gets pretty lonely too, my boss just hangs out in his office upstairs and my only other coworker is an elderly man who just wants to retire but the economy won't allow him that luxury. He's quiet and goes home the second he can. So that usually leaves me to clean up, get rolls down, set up for recycling, and mindlessly wipe things down in solitude.
Every week I clean out our water system, grease the press, check oil levels, adjust rollers, clean out the folder, lube the clutches, replace the cutting blade and cutting rubbers, check splice breaks, and flush the ink pumps. I can get most of that stuff done on Monday since we usually don't have any print jobs on Monday. The leftover weekly maintenance chores I will get done throughout the week when there's down time.
I'm the only one who actually does any of the work and it'd be nice if my boss would hire another employee but he says we don't got the funds. The elderly man does help me from time to time, especially if it's something out of the ordinary like replacing a water motor or something. He, like me, enjoys doing repairs and since he's put in his time doing maintenance for the past 35 years or so he just leaves it to me.
It's a decent job, beats working retail or food service. My last job was in landscaping, that paid me fucking bank but it was just too hard on my body. Found myself drinking Rockstar Energy like it was water and chain smoking while digging trenches for irrigation.
I miss working with people my age though, I miss having friends and going out after work. Nowadays I just go home and watch YouTube, get high, play video games, and go to bed. I used to be so hopped up on caffeine that after a 10 hour shift in the sun putting in pave
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